e- Foreign Language Publications

E-book

Zuzana Buráková - Petra Filipová

The canon of American literature has undergone constant revision with many authors who were long excluded from wider recognition now being accepted as significant figures. With the emergence of postcolonial and ethnic studies after the 1960s, the diversity of the literary canon has become greater than ever, and we can now see American literature as remarkably distinctive in this respect.

The question of how to define ethnicity and how far an immigrant should go to preserve their ethnic heritage have always been addressed by writers, together with larger issues such as the definition of national identity and national literature, and where we should draw the lines between local and global identities. We understand that a single course in American ethnic literature cannot hope to answer all these complex questions, but we firmly believe that discussing these questions in classes can help us to be more understanding and tolerant of ethnic diversity.

For this reason, the main aim of this textbook is to provide an interdisciplinary introduction to American ethnic literatures with an emphasis on their historical and cultural background, to expand students’ knowledge of American literatures and cultures at the master’s level and familiarize them with specific features of ethnic literatures in the contemporary USA. The textbook contains information on Native American, African American, Asian American, Jewish American, and Hispanic American literature, history and culture.

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E-book

Jana Balegová

University textbook „Cursus Latinus - textbook“ is intended for students of the study program Latin language and literature. It is divided into „Introduction“ and 37 lessons. The content of lessons is morphology, sentence syntax and selected phenomena of case syntax of the Latin language. Each of the lessons contains a grammatical explanation, followed by sentences designed to demonstrate the forms of grammatical phenomena and the required vocabulary (Dictionary). Using these examples, students learn the basic principles of translation from Latin into Slovak and from Slovak into Latin. The textbook also includes a Latin-Slovak dictionary containing the entire vocabulary used in the textbook. The „Cursus Latinus - textbook“ is intended for the interpretation of grammar and the acquisition of grammatical phenomena of the Latin language under the guidance of the teacher. A parallel exercise book (Cursus Latinus – exercise book) is used to practice Latin grammar at home. The exercise book includes a key to the exercises and a Latin-Slovak dictionary containing vocabulary from the textbook and the exercise book. University textbook „Cursus Latinus - textbook“ is available electronically in PDF format.

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E-book

Jana Balegová

The university textbook „Cursus Latinus – exercise book“ is a parallel study material to the textbook „Cursus Latinus – textbook“. It is designed for practicing grammar at home. The content of the exercises corresponds in its focus to the lessons of the mentioned textbook, both in terms of the grammatical phenomena, as well as the vocabulary. For this reason, only vocabulary that was not included in the lessons of the textbook is included in the exercises. The Latin-Slovak dictionary at the end of the exercise book contains the entire vocabulary from the exercise book and the textbook. Part of the exercise book is a key that allows students to immediately check the correctness of their work. „Cursus Latinus - exercise book“ is available electronically in PDF format.

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E-book

Renáta Gregová

The book is primary designed for the first-year students of the study programme “English Language for European Institutions and Economy” and its subject “Comparative Phonetics and Phonology”. Following the structure of this subject, the textbook is divided into eleven chapters whose content provides the reader with the essential theoretical information about the given issue from the sound subsystems of the English and the Slovak languages. The structure of each chapter is as follows: (1) theoretical explanation of the topic, (2) Suggestions for further reading recommending additional sources that develop the topic, (3) exercises whose aim is to evaluate students’ theoretical knowledge of the theme presented in the particular chapter, as well as its practical application in the process of communication. Considering the content of the book, it can be also used a study material for the students of all philological study programmes whose content encompasses the sound system of the English and/or the Slovak language.

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E-book

Beáta Jurečková - Lívia Barnišinová

The e-Slovak textbook for dentists in practice - case studies is intended for foreign students of dentistry. It is primarily intended for students of the Slovak language as a foreign language, but the knowledge of the grammatical and lexical basics of the Slovak language at the A1, A2 level is needed.

The textbook consists of eight lessons, which are focused on listening comprehension (audio recordings), vocabulary expansion, systematisation of grammar and development of speech skills (case studies). The two lessons consist of repetitive, concluding exercises. The primary goal of the textbook is to connect language training with professional dental practice.

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E-book

Karin Sabolíková

The monograph provides a brief insight into the theory of news structures in the press and, consequently, the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis is applied in an examination of the structures of news. Critical discourse analysis following the theory and methodology of Teun van Dijk is used to analyse the representation of an industrial dispute, the Miners’ Strike of 1984-1985 in the UK, in the Czechoslovak newspaper Pravda.

The aim of the monograph is to examine the ways in which a single news item dealing with an international event was presented in a national newspaper based on its ideological perspective. The presented analysis does not cover all possible aspects of van Dijk’s approach of critical discourse analysis. A variety of issues remains to be explored in order to develop a richer, more complex analysis of the text structures. The monograph also intends to demonstrate that critical discourse analysis can complement more qualitatively the traditional method of quantitative content analysis.

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E-book

Adriana Saboviková

The monograph deals with the post-millennial media discourse in the UK and aims to popularize the currently used methodological framework in the form of a case study.

The theoretical basis is provided by the introductory chapters, which deal with the topic of migration and newspaper discourse in the UK. The methodological framework represents an increasingly popular combination of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, which is introduced not only theoretically but also practically used in the presented case study. The case study compares the language used in the British newspapers before and after the lifting of labor market restrictions in the UK for Bulgarians and Romanians, specifically in 2013 and 2014.

The research is based on the identification of special language patterns used in the compiled corpus to characterize Bulgarians and Romanians, specifically paying attention to nouns, verbs and numerals. By doing such research, scholars can identify the role of media discourse in depicting social reality.

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E-book

Renáta Panocová

The university textbook "Theories of Intercultural Communication" is primarily intended for master's degree students of translation and interpreting, as well as doctoral students of British and American Studies.

The goal of the textbook is to familiarize students with key theories in the field of intercultural communication. Eight chapters cover a selection of current theories focused on defining cultural dimensions, identity management and negotiation, accommodation and adaptation, anxiety and uncertainty management, and current research on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

The final chapter provides a historical overview of intercultural communication theories and outlines key research questions for the future.

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E-book

Jaroslav Marcin - Viktória Marcinová a kol.

This little book started out in a way that probably many other scholarly publications do: When the five of us met as doctoral students and instructors in the Department of British and American Studies, we soon realized that our research overlapped on a number of points. Most prominent among those was our interest in political or politicallymotivated discourse and the study of myths and manipulation that it employed. 

In the end, we decided to pool the results of our research together in order to create a more complex picture, providing a variety of perspectives and voices. In our endeavor, we were greatly aided by the financial support we received from a grant offered by the Šafárik University. The outcome of these efforts is the five chapters of this brief, but hopefully informative and insightful monograph.

In Chapter 1, Viktória Marcinová deals with the impact of totalitarian ideology on the translation of so-called “capitalist” drama during the first stage of normalization in Slovakia (1948-1968). In Chapter 2, the focus shifts to political discourse and manipulation in a democracy, as Jaroslav Marcin takes a closer look at the wartime rhetoric of American presidents. USA remains the focus also in Chapter 3, but this time the question, addressed by Martina Martausová, will be one of the myth of the American Dream and its presentation in post-9/11 United States. A similar idea, though in a different geographical-cultural context, is dealt with in Chapter 4, where Božena Velebná identifies myths of Scottish identity as portrayed in historic films. Finally, in Chapter 5, Eduard Soták will take a look at the role of the mass media within the topic of politically-motivated discourse and spread of political ideology.

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E-book

Henrich Hrehor - Martin Pekár (eds.)

(Košice, Kraków, Miskolc, Opava) : From the Middle Ages to the End of the 18th Century.

Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference, Košice, June 28–29, 2012

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E-book

Vladimír Leško

The book is the result of long-term contemplation on the relationships between the history of philosophy and its reflection in more or less systematic, or non-systematic forms of philosophizing of the most significant philosophical teachings of the 19th and 20th centuries (Hegel, Schelling, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Fink, Patočka, and Gadamer).

The primary goal of the work is to present the most significant historical-philosophical teachings of the 19th and 20th centuries in the formation and fulfillment of strong and weak models of the philosophy of the history of philosophy in the concepts of Hegel, Schelling, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Fink, Patočka, and Gadamer.

The results of the philosophy of the history of philosophy are presented here as a metatheoretical movement within historical-philosophical thinking, whose aim is not to empirically describe the historical-philosophical process, but to understand and explain it as an inseparable part of the most significant philosophical problems – what is philosophy, what is metaphysics, and the question of being.

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E-book

Marianna Sedláková a kol. 

The worksheets, based on the direct specific needs of teaching medical students in Košice, respect the real situation of teaching Slovak as a foreign language at UPJŠ.

They also reflect the relatively high number of Slavic students, especially from neighboring countries, who, although just beginning with the Slovak language, are at a higher communicative level compared to students from non-Slavic countries. Therefore, a special part of the worksheets with exercises is dedicated to them, which includes special exercises and dictionaries aimed at eliminating Slovak-Polish or Slovak-Ukrainian interference phenomena. Since some non-Slavic students come from the Czech language environment, we also add a glossary of the most common different expressions in Slovak, Czech, and, for the aforementioned reasons, Polish and Ukrainian. In the part intended for all students, both Slavic and non-Slavic, communicatively focused exercises for practicing grammatical phenomena predominantly at the A1 and A2 communication skill levels (according to the Common European Framework of Reference) prevail, and last but not least, exercises thematically focused on medicine and healthcare.

The texts from the thematic area are, of course, supplemented with realia of the city of Košice. As a functional supplement in the working material, we also publish test samples.

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E-book

Božena Velebná

The following material has been created during the two years of teaching English for Chemists at the Faculty of Science of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University and is therefore designed to meet the needs of this course. The main motivation was the lack of appropriate materials, especially as the groups generally comprise students with a very diverse level of English. This diversity therefore became the main criterion determining both the form and the content of this text.

In the ten units that provide material for a one semester course, the emphasis is put on teaching the students vocabulary and terminology, which is introduced via authentic texts, depending on the topic of each unit. Students are encouraged to learn the meaning of new words in context. Grammar is included too, with the aim of demonstrating and explaining grammatical rules by means of examples taken directly from the texts. For the more advanced students, grammatical exercises in this material can serve for revision while the beginners might need more supplementary materials.

I hope that this material, the preparation of which has been a challenging as well as enjoyable experience will be useful for future teachers and the students of this course.

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E-book

Zuzana Buráková

The English language study materials are intended for students of geography and general ecology at the Faculty of Science of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University. Their aim is to broaden communicative language competencies at an intermediate level of English proficiency, with an emphasis on the students’ field of study.

The individual chapters are based on the need for specialization within the various natural science disciplines and on preparing students to present their academic results not only at home, but also abroad. The study material contains a variety of texts, quizzes, exercises, maps, etc., which further illustrate the issues relevant to the field.

This material is intended to serve as a foundation for the future creation of even more precise materials needed for teaching specialized foreign language courses.

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